Eastbourne Borough v Enfield Town

[Tally Ho]

Sub :

Off, Knight. 

On, Adjei-Hersey.

(79).

5th yellow for Eastbourne. (81).

[Tally Ho]

Lets be the ones to get a late goal this time.

[Tally Ho]

Five minutes of stoppage time to be played.

[Tally Ho]

Lost 1-0.

[seemgee]

FT

[The Crowing Cockerel]

What has happened to the money we got for Marcus? Because the replacement NLS journey-men really aren't up to the job. Perhaps unsurprising, but I'm becoming a little disenchanted. The side seems to have lost it's soul with the likes of Marcus and Cass moving on. The new additions don't give me the impression of being in it for the long haul, and the manager currently looks as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. A better performance? Perhaps. But no points to show for it.

[djwilf]

Thanks for the update gents.     

Goals win matches....Sam isnt scoring this year...we dont have Marcus' magic and before too long it may be too late.   We re struggling to get draws.

I think we could spend some of Marcus fee however I imagine it may be invested back into the club.

 

Who knows?

[The Crowing Cockerel]

At least we'll have an nice new empty stand and unnecessary extra turnstiles to show for our stay in the NLS! Perhaps we should've gone for a smaller stand (rather than one which would meet the requirements for promotion to the NL) and crowd-funded for some extra quality in the squad? 🤦‍♂️

[MTHead]

Was always going to be tough. Investing any fee we got from Marcus deal into players signing fee and wages is short term fix ( even then there’s no guarantee that it will work). If it does what happens in the next season? We’re clearly going to have to rely on picking up points and try to survive this year, hoping that income / gates increase enough to have a longer term stay at this level. 

In my view we should restrict our capital investment to the minimum necessary to meet NLS requirements, perhaps using any surplus to increase the supporters experience during match days ! The current catering provision is below the needs for 800 plus crowds. Additional income is being lost and our reputation as a good place to come is poor. 

On the playing side, Gavin knows more about football management that 99% of us and we need to trust him and support him through this difficult time. He needs us to support him !
 

 

 

[cup of tea]

I don't know what you guys felt, I found Eastbourne to be a bit of a dirty side. They beat us as well but we are still scratching our heads as to how they did it. Very good defensively. Goals are going to be vital in this league, we are having a few problems there and it looks like you might have the same problem.

[The Crowing Cockerel]

59 minutes ago, cup of tea said:

I don't know what you guys felt, I found Eastbourne to be a bit of a dirty side. They beat us as well but we are still scratching our heads as to how they did it. Very good defensively. Goals are going to be vital in this league, we are having a few problems there and it looks like you might have the same problem.

You've managed to retain the likes of Liam Nash who will always score goals at non-league level. We, fortunately/unfortunately, had a striker in Marcus Wyllie who scored so many goals that he attracted the attention of the football league. Great news for him, but not for us when we need to replace his 33 goals in order to be competitive. Anyway, no point feeling sorry for ourselves. Either the manager is somehow able to work wonders with what he's got, or we can look forward to some closer away days next season!

[Barney]

9 hours ago, MTHead said:

Was always going to be tough. Investing any fee we got from Marcus deal into players signing fee and wages is short term fix ( even then there’s no guarantee that it will work). If it does what happens in the next season? We’re clearly going to have to rely on picking up points and try to survive this year, hoping that income / gates increase enough to have a longer term stay at this level. 

In my view we should restrict our capital investment to the minimum necessary to meet NLS requirements, perhaps using any surplus to increase the supporters experience during match days ! The current catering provision is below the needs for 800 plus crowds. Additional income is being lost and our reputation as a good place to come is poor. 

On the playing side, Gavin knows more about football management that 99% of us and we need to trust him and support him through this difficult time. He needs us to support him !

Completely agree with this MTHead - we have to try to get to a position where we are sustainable at this level (admittedly that's not an easy task, as we're finding out). Spending one off transfer incomes on player wages might (or might not) get us players that can improve us, but where do we go when that money is spent in 6 or 12 months? I'm sure someone from the board would be much better positioned to comment on this, but in my mind it's much safer to set a player budget based on expected income through the season (tickets, bar revenue etc) as this should be guaranteed in theory, and isn't going to dry up.

Also agree that improving the supporter experience is a big priority, as I understand it, there are some things that we have to upgrade (e.g. turnstiles, additional seating) by a certain date as part of being at this level. It's obviously frustrating if we sink a load of money into a stand for example, which we then don't need if we do go back down, however there's not a lot we can do about that and ultimately they are improving our facilities longer term. There's also the need to have better catering facilities, bar capacity, a new space that we can hire out etc. and even at the step below this probably needed to be done. Yes it's arguably taking money away from the team in the short term, however investing in these facilities puts us in a better and more sustainable position to grow the club, spend more in the squad and hopefully get a foothold at this level over the medium to long term.

11 hours ago, The Crowing Cockerel said:

What has happened to the money we got for Marcus? Because the replacement NLS journey-men really aren't up to the job. Perhaps unsurprising, but I'm becoming a little disenchanted. The side seems to have lost it's soul with the likes of Marcus and Cass moving on. The new additions don't give me the impression of being in it for the long haul, and the manager currently looks as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. A better performance? Perhaps. But no points to show for it.

In terms of player recruitment, I don't think Gavin has been dealt a great hand here losing Marcus so late in the day. Not sure it's totally fair to question the "NLS journey-men" when some people during pre-season were saying that we needed players with experience at this level. I'm hearing that the better players at the step below are getting paid lots, so that's maybe not an option, whilst clearly the better NLS players are going to be getting even more, and are likely on contract. It's not like we can just go out and buy/recruit a quality player at this stage in the season, the better players will have clubs and be getting regular game time, so why would they come to us? Perhaps Gavin can unearth a player who isn't playing currently who can improve us (and who we can afford, and wants to join), but this isn't an easy thing to do - I think that we largely have to rely on coaching, preparation and working with what we have to see if we can turn this around. I'm caveating this with the fact that I've not seen a game this season yet (I'll be there on Saturday), so I can't really judge individual players, but I'm hearing positive things about at least some of the new players we've signed.

Again, I've not been at any games, but the Twitter feed last night at least suggested that we were competitive and had chances to get a point. Obviously we didn't, and it's another loss, but it's not like we're getting beaten out of sight in every game - which gives me some optimism that we can turn this around with a bit of luck and a lot of effort. Football is so much about confidence and momentum, and if we can find a way to nick a few scrappy results that might breed more confidence, and see us getting things out of these games that we're coming close in. Also worth saying that (although it's early days,) we've played 6 of the top 7 in the table - I know this can change, but it's looking like we maybe have had one of the tougher starts. Of course this could be me clutching at straws, but we have to stay optimistic, support the team, and believe that we can turn this around, right?

[Benjrider10]

I couldn't go to Eastbourne yesterday, the earlier coach departure didn't work for me. Plus I realised that even if I had decided to go at the last minute, I would have had to pay GBP 18 at the gate as opposed to GBP 15 in advance. This is a trend I don't like (we are no different). At our level, people do sometimes decide whether to attend or not quite late in the day (whether home or away fans) - I think clubs are losing out by using this two-tier pricing.

I'm not surprised Gavin is down, the two injury time winning goals we conceded at home to Hemel and away to Chippenham were real gut-wrenchers. But on the plus side and as others have pointed out, apart from the Slough game where our defending was awful, we have been competitive in all our league matches. Fine margins indeed but I am convinced our luck will turn, hopefully starting with Maidstone on Saturday.

 

[Raingod]

Hmmm .. a real game of 2 halves .... at half time I was probably regretting the 6 hour round trip as we were disappointing ... they dominated the first 30 mins or so and could have been more than one up.

Their goal came after Leshabella misplaced his pass in the middle of the pitch and they broke quickly and scored .

We had a few half chances, a few times not shooting when we had the chance .. but overall not much at all.

Second half was much better .. we created a lot more - there was real drive to push for an equaliser and I think we more than deserved one.

Yes they hit the post and Rhys made a couple of good saves but we looked pretty good. They were definately under pressure and slowing the game down at the end! And they are full time!

Last 3 games could have been 3 draws (or even 2 wins and a draw) .. so we just need to keep plugging away... 

Gav's subs were positive .. . However personally think neither striker has impressed me enough so far and think we need to recruit here ..feel a bit for RBR who I believe is our only outfield player yet to start - surely he should be given a chance?

Solomon looked solid at CB as well, replacing Bernie after a few mistakes in recent games.

 

Feels like we need to change the long throw routine as was unsuccessful all evening - perhaps swap Joash with someone else here and change what we do?

And still think we do not keep the ball enough - the players have the ablility to keep it more

Overall though, felt positive after the 2nd half and roll on Saturday - which is an aboslute must win - I would like to see us play with 2 strikers and go for it

#inGavwetrust

 

[andyetfc]

Who would be a football manager?

[dwhe]

On 04/09/2024 at 21:48, andyetfc said:

Who would be a football manager?

Erm not me (he says firing up Football Manager 24 where he has taken ET to the Premier League)